I read Popcorn by Ben Elton when I was in high school (so, in the last two years, clearly) and I remember enjoying it.
I did not enjoy this, unfortunately, and I wonder if I would like Popcorn on a re-read. His style of writing just doesn’t age well.
The plot is set in the not too distant future, where humans have messed up the climate to the point where everyone needs to live in biospheres/away from the rays of the sun, or get cancer immediately. There’s a big bad corporation, a greenpeace warrior type rebel alliance, and some greyscale characters in the middle.
One of those is Max, a vain, rich film star who’s taken advantage of the available cosmetic surgeries, including getting horn implants (among other things). He comes across one of the rebels who happens to be a beautiful young woman, and is smitten from the off. He finds himself pulled into a race to save the world as he tries to impress Rosalie.
I found myself distracted by the bad spelling – ‘fawcet’ crops up at one point – as well as the tenuous grasp on basic mathematics. Max has been a star for 8 years, since he was 20, but we already know he’s 26. Another character, Judy, was bullied at school for the first 16 years of his life but we don’t go to school from the first year, unless it’s drastically different in this world. When you find yourself focussing on those details, it’s a sign for me that it’s not an engaging story.
Apart from that, it’s also badly written – like a soap narrative but gone bad. It’s aimless, repetitive and doesn’t really seem to go anywhere for a long time, it’s hard to know what’s supposed to be happening. You can almost hear Ben Elton laughing smugly as he types; ‘claustrosphere’, the ironic name for the corporate bio-dome we all live in in the future, hehehe. It read like it was trying to be Terry Pratchett without the wit and good heartedness.
I don’t recommend this – read Terry Pratchett or any other sci-fi novel if you’re looking for something.
Books and race reviews 